As the death toll swelled last week, increases in the number of patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 who required care in hospitals began to slow. The governor said that trend continued on Sunday, as California hospitals experienced a 1.9 percent spike in coronavirus patients.

“Hospitalizations are beginning to flatten, but still growing,” Newsom said.

More than 3,200 patients with COVID-19 remain hospitalized around the state, with more than one-third of those patients requiring care in ICU units. Newsom said the number of patients in ICU units increased by 2.8 percent on Sunday following a week in which the number remained relatively stagnant.

Newsom said he plans to provide more details and give Californians a look “behind the curtain,” on where the state stands with regard to the six indicators being used to determine when to relax the stay-at-home order.

“Deaths continue to rise, hospitalization numbers modestly continuing to rise and ICU numbers beginning to flatten,” Newsom said. “But we’re not seeing that downward trend we need to see in order to provide more clarity on that roadmap to recovery which we rolled out last week.”

Newsom also provided an update Monday on data the California Department of Public Health has gathered on the basis of race and ethnicity.

With data from more than 90 percent of the COVID-19 deaths around the state, Newsom said African-Americans –who account for six percent of the state’s population–account for 12 percent of the coronavirus deaths.

“We know that communities of color, those numbers that were just relayed, we know that these communities have a higher burden of illness. That’s a reflection of poverty and racism and other things that we know that have resulted in an inequitable distribution of disease.” Dr. Sonia Angell, the state health officer, said.

Angell said health officials’ concerns with the data are “not just about the endpoint of death,” and noted the state is working on addressing health inequities by working closely with urban area to provide more coronavirus testing and other forms of support.

“It relates to inequities that exist when people do seek care, it relates to issues that are related to testing and every step along the way, we’re looking very carefully at these issues to make sure that we help address the inequities,” Angell said.

Kerry Crowley is a multimedia beat reporter covering the San Francisco Giants. He spent his early days throwing curveballs in San Francisco’s youth leagues before studying journalism at Arizona State University. Kerry has covered every level of baseball, from local preps to the Cape Cod League, and is now on a quest to determine which Major League city serves the best cheeseburger.

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